Who Buries the Dead: A Sebastian St. Cyr Mystery Page 7

  A harassed expression drifted across the majordomo’s normally carefully controlled countenance. At close range, the child’s screams were painful. “I’m afraid so, my lord.” He laid the driving coat over one arm, then froze when he got a better look at the elegant, high-crowned beaver hat in his hands. “Is that a bullet hole, my lord?”

  Sebastian yanked off his driving gloves. “It is. And it was a new hat too. Calhoun is going to be devastated.” He glanced up as another howl drifted down from above. “How long has he been at it?”

  “A good while, I’m afraid. He started early this evening.”

  “Well, at least we know there’s nothing wrong with his lungs,” said Sebastian, taking the stairs to the nursery two at a time.

  He was halfway to the third floor when he met Claire Bisette on her way down to make a fresh bottle of sweetened dill and fennel water. Hero might have refused to employ a wet nurse, but she’d welcomed Claire into their household with relief. An impoverished French émigrée in her early thirties, Claire was both older and considerably better educated than the young, ignorant country girls who typically served as nursemaids.

  “What set him off?” he asked Claire.

  She paused to push a stray lock of light brown hair out of her face with the back of one delicate wrist. “Who knows? Believe it or not, he’s better now than he was.”

  Climbing to the top of the stairs, Sebastian found Hero walking back and forth before the nursery fire, the child’s rigid body held so that her shoulder pressed against his stomach, his little fists clenched tight, his face red and distorted with his howls. At the sound of Sebastian’s step, she turned, her quietly exasperated gaze meeting his.

  “Here,” said Sebastian, and walked forward to take his screaming son into his arms.

  “I showed the section of inscribed lead to my father,” Hero said sometime later, in a quiet moment when Simon dozed fitfully against her.

  Sebastian had settled on the hearthrug beside her, his back propped against the side of her chair, a glass of wine in one hand. “And?” he asked, looking up at her.

  “He says the tomb of Charles I was discovered just last week in St. George’s in Windsor Castle, when the workmen constructing a new passage to the royal vault accidentally stumbled upon it. Needless to say, he was not at all pleased by the possibility that someone might have made off with the royal coffin strap.”

  Sebastian took a slow sip of his wine. “Interesting. Especially when you consider that Stanley Preston was an avid collector with a special interest in items from the Tudor and Stuart periods. He even has Oliver Cromwell’s head.”

  “His actual head?”

  “The actual head—along with those of Henri IV and the Duke of Suffolk.”

  “How ghoulish—not to mention suggestive, given how Preston died.” She cautiously readjusted the sleeping child’s weight. “What manner of man was he?”

  “Preston? Proud. Socially ambitious. Quarrelsome. Although, according to a rather interesting spinster I met, he was also a devout and devoted family man. The sort, she says, one could like in spite of himself.”

  “If one could overlook the fact that he owned hundreds of slaves,” said Hero.

  “Yes. But it never ceases to amaze me the number of otherwise decent members of our society who can overlook it without any difficulty at all. I suppose it’s because the institution is both legal and biblical—not to mention highly profitable. So it never occurs to most people to question the custom any further.”

  He realized she was staring at him with an oddly intent, unreadable gaze. “What is it you’re not telling me?” she said.

  He paused in the act of raising his wineglass to his lips. “What do you mean?”

  “There’s a trickle of dried blood on your left temple.”

  “There is?” He pushed to his feet and went to inspect his forehead in the mirror over the washstand. “So there is. That shot obviously came closer than I realized.”

  “Someone shot at you? Tonight?”

  He wet a cloth and dabbed at the cut. “Just as I was turning onto Brook Street. They must have been lying in wait for me.”

  “And it didn’t occur to you to mention it to me?”

  “They missed.”

  “No, they didn’t.”

  He dabbed at the dried blood again, his gaze still on his reflection in the mirror. “I’ve obviously stirred someone up. The problem is, I haven’t the slightest notion whom. The only vaguely possible suspects I’ve found so far are a hussar captain who’s been showing an unwelcome interest in Preston’s daughter—unwelcome to Preston, that is—and a banker who publicly quarreled with Preston the night he died. But the banker is by all reports out of town, and I haven’t even tracked down the captain yet.”

  “Someone must see you as a threat,” said Hero, her voice oddly tight. “They tried to kill you.”

  “It could have been meant as a warning.” The babe stirred and let out a soft cry, and Sebastian set aside the bloodstained cloth and turned to reach for the child. “Here; let me have him for a while.”

  She hesitated, and he saw something flare in her eyes, something that was there and then gone, as if quickly hidden away from him. They’d grown so much closer in the months since their marriage, yet he knew she still kept many of her thoughts and feelings from him.

  “What?” he said.

  “Just . . . be careful, Sebastian. I don’t understand what’s happening. But whatever it is, it’s ugly. Very ugly.”

  “My dear Lady Devlin,” he said teasingly as he eased the now squalling infant from her grasp. “Are you worried?”

  He expected her to answer with one of her typically wry, flippant responses.

  Instead, she reached up to touch her fingertips to the flesh beside the still raw wound on his forehead and said, “Yes.”

  Chapter 13

  T he royal residence of Windsor Castle lay in the provincial town of Windsor, some twenty miles to the west of London on the southern bank of the river Thames. Jarvis had dispatched one of his men that morning with a message warning the Dean to prepare for a visit to the royal vault. But by the time he arrived, the sun had long since slipped below the western walls of the castle.

  The Honorable and Right Reverend Edward Legge, who served in the prestigious position of Dean of St. George’s Chapel, waited in the lower court to meet him, the ancient medieval battlements looming dark against a black sky. A ferociously ambitious cleric who’d long ago perfected the art of flattering and pleasing those in power, Legge was ponderous and fleshy, with startlingly dark, heavy brows and a weak chin. Now his jowly face showed slick with a nervous sweat despite the cold wind that whipped at his cassock and sent dried leaves scuttling across the castle’s wide, sloping lawns. At his side stood the chapel’s virger, Rowan Toop, with a horn lantern gripped tightly in one hand. The Dean might be in charge of the day-to-day affairs of the chapel, but it was the virger who oversaw the care and maintenance of the venerable old buildings and supervised the burial of the dead.

  “My lord,” said the Dean, both men bowing low as a castle guard leapt forward to open the carriage door. “We are truly honored to—”

  Jarvis stepped down with an agility surprising for one of his size and cut off the Dean with a curt, “I trust all is ready?”

  “Yes, my lord. If I might be so bold as to offer your lordship a nice hot cup of tea? Or perhaps a glass of wine before we—”

  “No.”

  The Dean bowed again, his habitual bland smile still firmly in place as he held out a hand toward the chapel’s ornate western front. “If you’ll come this way, my lord?”

  They followed the lantern-bearing virger into the medieval church’s vast, soaring nave, with its ancient stained-glass windows and elaborately carved ceiling and stately alabaster monuments. St. George’s was second only to Westminster
Abbey as the burial place of kings and queens, princes and princesses—although over the years the precise location of certain royals had become somewhat fuzzy.

  The entrance to the Prince of Wales’s new passage lay in the quire, guarded by a recently installed iron gate wrapped with a heavy padlock and chain. “Excuse me, my lord,” said the Dean, producing a large key. “This will take but a moment.”

  Jarvis grunted, his gaze drifting over the colorful rows of helms and banners that hung above the intricately carved wooden quire stalls, for the chapel also served as home to the Knights of the Garter.

  “As you can see, my lord,” said the Dean as he fumbled with the lock, “we’ve taken every precaution to ensure that there will be no repeat of the unfortunate scenes that followed the discovery of King Edward’s remains.”

  “I should hope so,” said Jarvis. When workmen repaving the chapel late in the previous century had accidentally broken into the vault containing the seven-foot coffin of Edward IV, so many gawkers and relic seekers had managed to find their way into the crypt that they’d carried off much of what was left of Edward—one tooth, lock of hair, and finger bone at a time—before anyone thought to put a stop to it.

  The chain rattled as the Dean unwrapped the heavy links, his breath forming a white vapor cloud in the cold. “There,” he said, swinging open the gate and stepping back to allow the lantern-bearing virger to precede them.

  The narrow, nearly complete passage sloped steeply downward, so that they descended rapidly, their footsteps echoing hollowly, the cold air heavy with the smell of dank earth and old death. The small vault that had originally been intended as only a temporary repository for Henry VIII’s favorite Queen lay roughly halfway between the high altar and the sovereign’s garter stall, on the western side of the passage. Three days before, when Jarvis had last visited the crypt, the workmen had expanded their original, accidental aperture into an opening large enough to allow him to enter. Now all the rubble from that effort had been cleared away and a screen discreetly placed before the opening.

  Jarvis waited, hands clasped behind his back, while the Dean shifted the screen to one side.

  “Not exactly what you’d expect as the final resting place of Henry VIII and Jane Seymour, now, is it?” said the virger, ducking inside with his lamp held before him.

  The light danced around a crudely constructed vault faced with rough brick and measuring no more than seven or eight feet wide and ten feet long. The arched ceiling was so low, Jarvis had to stoop considerably as he entered.

  The three coffins lay precisely as they had when he’d last seen them, with Henry VIII’s bones and bits of cloth showing quite clearly amidst the decayed wood and warped lead of his shattered casket. Beside him, Jane Seymour’s better-preserved casket rested at an odd angle against the far wall, as if it had been hastily shoved aside by frightened men working stealthily to bury a murdered king.

  The coffin of the unlucky Charles I lay to the left of his predecessors, still covered with the original black velvet pall, which had been carefully replaced after Jarvis’s last visit.

  The Dean said, “As you can see, my lord, nothing has been disturbed.”

  “Remove the pall,” said Jarvis.

  The Dean’s smile of gentle complaisance faltered. “My lord?”

  “You heard me.”

  The Dean nodded to the virger, who glanced around helplessly for someplace to set his lantern.

  “Here, give it to me,” snapped the Dean, taking the lantern from the man’s grasp.

  The virger swiped the palms of both hands down the sides of his cassock, as if reluctant to touch the dusty, threadbare old cloth before them. He was a skinny man well into his thirties, with straight, straw-colored hair and a long, bony face dominated by a protuberant mouth full of large, crooked teeth. Unlike the Dean, who was the seventh son of an earl and probably destined for a bishopric, the virger was a layman of far more ordinary origins. Moving slowly, he carefully folded back the pall to reveal Charles I’s lead coffin, white and chalky with age.

  On his last visit to the vault, Jarvis had left strict instructions that the coffin was not to be touched; its lid was to remain soldered tight and the leaden scroll that encircled it kept in place to await the Prince’s formal examination. Now the scroll gaped open, its cut edges showing clearly where the section bearing the inscription KING CHARLES, 1648 had been removed. But rather than tackle the solder, the thieves had simply cut a large, square opening in the upper part of the lid—easy enough to do since the outer lead coffin was only a thin sheet and its wooden lining much decayed.

  “Give me the lantern,” said Jarvis.

  The Dean stood frozen, eyes wide, jaw slack with horror.

  “Hand it to me, damn you.”

  The Dean gave a start and held it out to him.

  Jarvis raised the lantern high, so that the golden light played over the coffin’s interior. An unctuous, foul-smelling matter glistened from the cerecloth where it had been pulled back to reveal a large, bowl-like depression, of the size and shape of a head. But only a few darkened wisps of hair now clung to the stained, waxy shroud. The torso ended abruptly at the neck.

  “Merciful heavens,” said the Dean, one hand cupped over his nose and mouth. “Someone’s stolen the King’s head.”

  Chapter 14

  Tuesday, 23 March

  H ero cradled her infant son in her arms and watched in the glow from the fire as his tiny fist opened and closed against her bare skin.

  She’d discovered a rare peace in the quiet hours before dawn, when the world still sleeps and the only sounds are the whispered fall of ash on the hearth and the soft suckling of a babe at his mother’s breast. Smiling, she breathed in the child’s sweet scent and let the quiet joy of the moment flow through her. She was still awed by the ability of her body to supply him with nourishment and had become fiercely protective of this time they shared. Her determination to nurse her own child was not the sacrifice Jarvis envisioned—not a selfless act at all, but something selfish. Something that brought her pleasure and a trembling awareness of the powerful depths of her love for both her son and the man who had given him to her.

  Through all her growing-up years, she’d been determined never to marry, determined never to subject herself to the state of subordination to which England’s laws reduced any woman unwise enough to become a wife. Yet even then, she had wanted this, wanted to have a child of her own.

  The babe looked up, his gaze locking with hers. She smiled at him, and he gave her in return a big, toothless grin that sent a trickle of milk running down his chin. And she felt a swift, unexpected sting of tears in her eyes, for life’s greatest joys contain within them a yawning sadness. A bittersweet awareness that even as we savor a cherished instant it is passing and will all too soon be but a memory.

  A hushed murmur drew her gaze to where Devlin slept, his dark head moving restlessly against the pillow. She thought of the bullet that had come so close to taking him from her last night, and her arms tightened around the child’s small, warm body. She was not a woman who was accustomed to fear; she’d always despised those who obsessed anxiously about the future. Yet with great love comes great fear—the fear of loss. And in that moment, she knew its cold grip.

  She pushed it away, both ashamed of her weakness and appalled by it.

  “It’s your fault,” she whispered to the now contented babe. “You’ve done this to me.”

  He smiled again, his suckling ceased, his eyes drifting closed.

  She felt his small body relax against hers, heard his breathing ease into sleep. And still she sat beside the fire, hugging him close and savoring the moment.

  She left Brook Street an hour later, the clatter of her horses’ hooves echoing through the still, empty streets of Mayfair as her coachman turned the team toward the City. She’d been told that to truly understand the cost
ermongers of London, she needed to attend one of the great central markets where they purchased their stock. And so she had chosen to visit the grandest market of them all: Covent Garden.

  The rising sun was just beginning to send streaks of gold and fiery orange across a pale sky when she reached the site of the city’s largest produce and flower market. Yet already the vast square before the old, temple-like church of St. Paul’s was thronged with a shouting, shoving, laughing crowd that surged around stalls piled high with everything from mud-encrusted onions and potatoes to bundles of white leaks and dark purple pickling cabbages.

  She had hired a skinny, fourteen-year-old boy named Lucky Liam Gordon to serve as her guide to the wonders of the market. He had a thatch of rusty brown hair and a scattering of freckles across a pug nose, and he was the son, grandson, and great-grandson of costermongers. Hero was only just beginning to understand how closely knit—and hereditary—the trade was.

  “Them’s the growers’ wagons,” said Lucky, nodding to the lines of empty covered wagons and carts pulling away from the square. “They start rollin’ in from the farms about three. I hear tell they load ’em at sunset, then leave for the City anywhere between ten and one, dependin’ on how far they’ve got to come.” He had to shout to be heard over the roar of hundreds of haggling voices, the cracking of whips and the braying of donkeys and the rattle of iron-rimmed wheels bouncing over uneven paving stones.

  Hero let her gaze drift over the crush of gaily painted handbarrows, the rows of donkey carts with cracked harnesses so old they were often held together with wire or rope. The crisp morning air was heavy with the scents of charcoal smoke and dung and earthy vegetables, the pungent aromas from the herb stalls mingling with the sweet fragrance of potted laurels and myrtles and boxes. She smiled at the sight of two little boys chasing each other across cobbles smeared green with discarded leaves. Then one of the boys slipped and nearly collided with a market woman staggering beneath a heavy basket balanced on her head, before careening into Hero.